Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
Premise: A troubled family inherits a house with a secret - a book that contains the secrets to the invisible world of faeries and goblins.
Stars: Mary-Louise Parker * Freddie Highmore * Sarah Bolger * Nick Nolte * Seth Rogen (voice) * David Strathairn * Joan Plowright * Martin Short (voice)
Story: Simon and Jared Grace (Highmore), their sister Mallory (Bolger) and mother Helen (Parker) pack up their things and move to an inherited home. Jared discovers a book by Spiderwick (Strathairn) that describes the hidden beings that inhabit the world, which leads to one of the evil beings of that world - the ogre Mulgarath (Nick Nolte) - coming after him and his family.
Review: The special effects are eye-catching - the fairies, the sylphs, even the goblins - but after a decade now of Harry Potter, Star Wars prequels, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, etc. effects are no longer the attention-grabbing definition of a movie that some seem to believe they are. This film relies on a children's book but loses a lot of the wonder that seems to define children's movies. Even though they are entertaining, effects just can't make a movie by themselves. They should be used to enhance a film.
Highmore is definitely distracting when playing the roles of the twins. His performance as Simon is flat and uninvolving, while that of Jared appears to make the character have disconnected personalities. Sarah Bolger as the older sister does well, but Mary-Louise Parker seems miscast. As effects can't carry a movie by themselves, a decent performance by one family member can't do the supposed difficulties they are going through well enough.
I'd recommend it for the effects alone, simply because they are nice to see, but the movie falls flat. The only real delights are Hogsqueal the hobgoblin (Rogen) and Thimbletack the Brownie (Short), but like I said, they and Bolger can't carry the film by themselves.
Overall: Bad
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